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Madame Figaro interviewed the co-president of Fragonard, Agnès Costa who directs the perfumery together with her sister Françoise. « Je ne suis pas un nez, mais je briefe la personne qui va créer le parfum et pour moi, la personne qui sait quelle fragrance elle cherche est aussi importante que l’artiste chargé de la mettre au point. » "I am not a nose, but I brief the person who will create the perfume and for me, the person who knows what fragrance she [or he] is looking for is as important as the artist who is entrusted with making it happen."
Read more......
The New Straits Times has an interview with Camille Goutal, the co-creator of Annick Goutal perfumes with Isabelle Doyen. “We never test perfume on people, we don’t do a market test. We don’t try to go against the trend, we only create things that we like,” Camille says. [...].....
Continue reading "Interview with Camille Goutal Around Les Orientalistes {Fragrant Reading}" »
Two interviews with two major defining personalities of 20th and 21st century perfumery. Both are French yet their styles and sensibilities differ, some would say diametrally so. On this blog, we might have encouraged people to see a structural contrast between their visions. Serge Lutens and Jean Claude Ellena answer questions on their art to Vogue, in French. We translate one meaningful quote from each Q & A as our Scented Quote(s) of the Day. Interview with Serge Lutens "Comment peut-on savoir si un parfum va durer dans le temps ?
C’est le public qui choisit. Ce qui lui résiste accède à la reconnaissance. Le parfum peut, s’il a des adeptes – je devrais dire des « timbrés » - accéder à quelque chose de plus ou moins légendaire." ~ "How can one know that a perfume will be enduringly popular? - It is the public that chooses. What continues to have its favor comes to be recognized. Perfume can, if it has fans - I should say "addicts" - become more or less of a legend.".....
Continue reading "Interview with Serge Lutens & Jean Claude Ellena by Vogue {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Quotes of the Day}" »
Wallpaper loved the new Un Jardin Après La Mousson by Hermès and took the opportunity of the recent launch to ask in-house perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena some questions about his creative process.....
Continue reading "A Q & A with Jean-Claude Ellena {Fragrant Reading}" »
1921 advert by Sem for Chanel No. 5 - Doesn't it say in a nutshell how ideal this perfume is? It floats in the sky and the élégante is looking up to it. "Mademoiselle Chanel et le parfum no. 5" © ADAGP
There is an interesting dossier on Joyce.fr offering a retrospective of the history of Chanel No. 5. The images are well-worth discovering. As zakuski, we have selected three that we thought were particularly captivating. The top one is the first advert for Chanel no. 5 drawn by Sem in 1921 (see also the Sem candles issued by Maxim's of Paris). The ad with actress Carole Bouquet dated 1997 and photographed by Dominique Issemann is the sexiest we have seen with her....
Carole Bouquet photographed by Dominique Issemann, 1997 © Chanel
Continue reading "Chanel No 5: Retrospective {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Images & Perfume Adverts}" »
We know that many perfumistas will appreciate and savor the fact that an upcoming debut novel by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez bears as title the commonly bandied about disparaging expressions "old lady perfume" and "old lady smell" put together in one neat stroke of the pen. By the way, The Smell of Old Lady Perfume aims a young adult audience. The disturbing smell it refers to is the narrator's grandmother's, a "smell" "worse than Sundays" that will help test her mettle (we know, it can be hard).......
Continue reading "The Smell of Old Lady Perfume (2008) {Fragrant Reading}" »
There is a book that promises to be absolutely fascinating to read for people who pay attention to olfaction and about which I was reminded of by a thoughtful comment from reader Anita about form and function regarding perfume as comparable to architecture in the discussion about Veuillet-Gallot's guide to perfume below.
That book is entitled Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places Through The Sense of Smell, authored by Anna Barbara and Anthony Perliss and published by Skira. It is on my must-read list, but I thought I might just as well mention it now while I was thinking about it.....
Continue reading "Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Places Through The Sense of Smell {Fragrant Reading}" »
In an interview in French with Cartier in-house perfumer Mathilde Laurent, the "nose" reveals how the process of customization of a perfume goes. The tab is pretty steep at 60 000 €. The perfumer talks about her transfer from Guerlain to Cartier, which she already evoked in previous interviews. She explains how a keen sense of smell is not a gift but the result of training and linked with qualities of intelligence and creativity. Someone can have a very sensitive sense of smell, yet lack creativity for example. And one does not just smell with the nose but with the brain. In brief, it is a refutation of the Grenouille myth whereby a superhuman sense of smell explains the success and inevitability of a perfumer's vocation however warped in that case.....
Continue reading "Mathilde Laurent: Perfume is a Weapon of Seduction {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Quote of the Day}" »
Mimosa is one of the most delicate of floral scents, hard to capture in a fragrance. It is simply intoxicating to inhale its scent in the South of France during the winter mimosa festivals in places like Bormes Les Mimosas.
There is an interesting article about its natural history and local adaptation on the French Riviera, as well as a list of perfumes in which the note appears as a main one or a more secondary one,....
Continue reading "Comprehensive Article on Mimosa {Fragrant Reading}" »
Le guide du parfum pour elle et lui by Rebecca Veuillet-Gallot is a popular, conveniently sized perfume guide first published in 1995 and last reprinted in 2005. One can only assume that most people in France who are seriously interested in perfume (as in the jus ), its descriptions and history own a copy of it or have read it at the library, especially so since its only alternative in French is the review guide by Luca Turin (1992;1994), which is out of print. We wanted to do a review of it because we almost bypassed it in favor of more copious tomes not expecting to find a tremendous amount of information in the rather slim copy. Once we started reading it, we had to realize that underneath its understated character, it is a wonderfully rich little book that one will go back to, finding new details each time depending on the questions you ask yourself.......
Dust jacket
Continue reading "Le Guide du Parfum by Rebecca Veuillet-Gallot: Book Review {Scented Thoughts} {Fragrant Reading}" »
 There is a nice interview with Jean Paul Gaultier in L'Express on the occasion of the launch of his Monsieur line of beauty products, including his first ever - reportedly this is how they present it - Eau de Cologne called Eau du Matin. "Monsieur" was chosen as a name for the line because the French designer believes in the return of Dandysm. Gaultier thinks that ideas about masculine beauty and personal care started to evolve back in the 1970s thanks to the hippies and later rock stars like David Bowie and Boy George.....
Continue reading "Jean Paul Gaultier Interviewed by L'Express on Beauty & Perfume {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Images & Adverts} {What Celebs Like to Wear}" »
The internet medium and the blog medium in particular seem to be a must for perfume writers these days. We learned that fragrance author Annick Le Guérer writes an online column on the blog Le-Luxe.fr entitled "Dans le Brûle-Parfums d'Annick Le Guérer". She also regularly proposes her "Coups de Coeur" regarding perfumes, i.e., the fragrances that she loves......
Continue reading "Annick Le Guérer's Online Column {Fragrant Reading}" »
BYZANCE Magazine by Guest Contributor PaulineShould you want to find some inspiration for adding an Oriental twist to your home, Byzance is the one magazine to read. I had a coup de coeur (fell in love with) as we say in French for this richly illustrated magazine which focuses on the relationships between Orient and Occident in the areas of decoration, interior design and art de vivre or art of fine living. A signature feature of the magazine is that they consecrate an "Inspiration Notebook" to a different color each time. This bi-monthly French-Lebanese magazine was first launched in 2003 by Désirée Sadek and Jean-Pierre Gueirard. It has now an Arabic edition since 2007. Sadek is the Editor in Chief of the ELLE Oriental which was launched in Arabic in 2006.....
Continue reading "Byzance Magazine: Art of Living Between East and West {Cultural Notes} {Fragrant Reading}" »
Eva Pasco is a romance novel author based in Newport, Rhode Island. Her debut novel entitled Underlying Notes is as centered on fragrance as any perfume junkie might hope (although the main character does not consider herself an addict). The book opens on a scene describing the menopause symptoms of Carla who is in her fifties, the first perfume quoted is Spark by Liz Clairborne, and fragrances are immediately presented as psychological aids, " If I lacked girlfriends, I made up for it by acquiring glass goddesses filled with nectar,"......
Continue reading "Underlying Notes by Eva Pasco: A Romance Novel About Perfume + 2 Excerpts {Fragrant Readings}" »
 There is an interesting interview with Francis Kurkdjian in Libération today. Some of the highlights or news we learn are that he has the ambition of creating his own brand in the future, like Karl Lagerfeld or Phillipe Starck.....
Continue reading "Interview with Francis Kurkdjian in Libération {Fragrant Reading}" »
Illusion of Complexity, Carol Alleman, 2001 There is a Q & A with Frederic Malle in the San Francisco Chronicle. Malle describes his work as an editor of perfumes. He is largely responsible for a movement that puts the perfumer center stage and gives him or her the status of author. A perfume for him without doubt can be a piece of art, on a par with a painting by Matisse. Short formulas, like short pieces of writing, are more difficult to achieve because only the essential is expressed. This set of beliefs represents modern ideas that are still debated. Some perfumers do not seem to care about authorship in the sense of it being individualistic and like to stress collaborative efforts; the model of film director or screenplay writer might better apply. Some perfumers will probably still see themselves as sophisticated urban artisans rather than Picassos. There was also a time once when perfumers took pride in creating complex formulas. Joséphine Catapano with Norell comes to mind about which she said "We all knew the formula was long, like a treaty" (note the "we"), as well as Ellena with the 160 ingredients in First (but he has since then evolved to embrace the position that it is a less interesting approach to take). More recently, a German perfume made by Frank Rittler, Steffen Schraut, still boasts "about 120 natural essences"..........
Continue reading "Frederic Malle on Perfume Publishing {Fragrant Reading}" »
As we already said before in our review of Paco Rabanne pour Homme, Cyprès de Rigaud is one of the most popular candles in France. Its scent is very forest-y, balsamic. An article in the Times relates its history and how Jackie Kennedy used to love to use it to scent the White House.......
Continue reading "Cyprès by Rigaud: The Nec Plus Ultra of Scented Candles {Holiday Shopping Ideas & Tips - $75 or Less} {Fragrant Reading}" »
There is a fascinating interview with author Katherine Ashenburg on the history and practices of cleanliness in Salon. Judging by the exchange she seems to retain the theses of classic works of previous researchers on these questions such as Alain Corbin, Georges Vigarello, or Françoise de Bonneville but she also introduces comparative American material for example on the turning point that the Civil War was in the United-States for the discovery of the advantages of cleanliness and its decidedly democratic flavor. She also brings her own personal reflections which are very interesting. The interview and excerpt form her book were so compelling, we immediately went to order a copy of it........
Continue reading "Interview with Katherine Ashenburg: Do You Prefer to Scrape, Change Shirts or Soap? {Fragrant Reading} {Holiday Shopping Ideas - $20 or Less} {Notebook: Fresh & Clean}" »
 Highly recommended read. It is especially illuminating on the kind of balance a great (and successful) creative perfumer attempts to strike between (needed) commercialism and his reflection on art. After discovering Maurice Roucel's perfumes such as Tocade, 24 Faubourg, L'Instant, Insolence, Musc Ravageur and many more you can also discover his sense of humor, earthiness, and intelligence in this interview given to Symrise, "Monsieur Roucel,
Perfumes classically consist of smells from meadows and forests, fruits and flowers, water and wood. But traditional perfumery has moved into the 21st century. What new challenges does this bring to perfumers?That’s not at all true! Since aldehydes were first used in perfumery in the 1920s in Chanel No. 5, perfumes have become much more abstract and are full of ingredients that cannot be found in nature......
Continue reading "Interview with Perfumer Maurice Roucel {Fragrant Reading}" »
German fashion designer Steffen Schraut launched a new, eponymous fragrance for women called Steffen Schraut Eau de Parfum. It was developed by the M M Fragrance group based in Düsseldorf and in particular by nose Frank Rittler. You can read an interview of his here. The perfume boasts a rich floral composition incorporating "about 120 natural essences".......
Continue reading "Steffen Schraut Eau de Parfum by Steffen Schraut {New Perfume} {Fragrant Reading}" »
Three young perfumers from Drom, Pierre Constantin-Guéros, Valérie Garnuch-Mentzel, and Dephine Jelk offer liberal advice on dos and donts to perfume afcionados and attempt to debunk a few myths in passing. Guéros for example advises to overlook the shape of the perfume bottle and says, “You’d be surprised to know that a lot of drugstore perfume companies spend more on the juice,”. He does not believe in the alleged all-transforming power of each individual's body chemistry either, “Unless you eat very spicy food all the time, your body chemistry won’t change a fragrance,” explains Guéros. “That’s a bit of a myth—you’d have to have a trained nose to be able to distinguish how a scent smells differently on two people.”........
Continue reading "Perfume Advice From The Noses: Yay for Drugstore Fragrances & Nay for Body Chemistry {Fragrant Reading} {Scented Thoughts}" »
Michele Hanson abhors the new high-profile doggie perfume trend (see previous post) as well as the kind of art best described by her as "Bleak Art Events I Have Known - the bare stone walls, installations, statements, the odd mattress, pair of tights, penis-nosed mannequins. The chaps who deliberately hadn't explained their works, wanting to be enigmatic - a clever trick if one has created a load of old cobblers." What do they have in common? Apparently they are totally irrelevant....... (Cartoon from humour.com)
Continue reading "Dog Perfumes & Cool Art are So Uncool: A Rant {Fragrant Reading}" »
 No, this is not a Bond No. 9. A neurologist is fascinated by the impact scent has on memory and a family-based enterprise delivers the essence(s) of Brooklyn in a creation called Eau de Brooklyn. People tell how it reminds them of places they have visited, of smaller areas within the neighborhood......
Continue reading "It Smells Like Brooklyn {Fragrant Reading}" »
Photo: Ling Fei/Salons du Palais Royal
"A quoi sert le parfum ? Nous sommes tous fragiles. Le parfum est une arme contre notre fragilité, notre timidité.
Il sert à s'exprimer, à se donner l'image la plus cohérente qu'on aimerait que les autres aient de soi. Séduire, c'est être soi-même et rencontrer les autres.
Sinon, cela peut être utile pour un comportement social. On porte un sac à initiales et un parfum qu'on reconnaît partout. Ainsi, on ne risque pas d'être aimé pour soi-même." Translation & interview after the jump..........
Continue reading "Scented Quote of the Day, from Serge Lutens: - {Fragrant Reading}" »
Mademoiselle de Camargo by Nicolas Lancret (1730) "Le parfum c'est le complément indispensable de la personnalité féminine, c'est le finishing touch d'une robe, c'est la rose dont Lancret signait ses toiles". ~ "Perfume is the indispensable complement to the feminine personality; it is the finishing touch of a dress; it is like the rose that Lancret used to sign his paintings."........
Continue reading "Scented Quote of the Day, from Christian Dior: - 60th Anniversary of Miss Dior {Fragrant Reading}" »
 Need a little relaxation? Here is a *spoof* article about the latest perfume by Britney Spears and the difficulties experienced by the marketing team when attempting to match the image of the perfume with that of the celebrity it is inspired by, "Lars Mitchell, Director of Product Management for Elizabeth Arden, remarked on the difficulty on finding an appropriate name for the perfume. (Perfume bottle is made from recycled prison bars)........
Continue reading "Britney Spears Inspires a Spoof Perfume {Fragrant Reading} {Celebrity Fragrance}" »
Perfumers sometimes set aside their flacons and notebooks full of formulas and quickly jotted-down notes and instead pick up a more literary or theoretical pen deciding to write a book. Writings by seasoned perfumers are amongst some of the most interesting texts to read on perfume. Edmond Roudnitska, Jean Kerléo, Maurice Maurin, and Jean-Claude Ellena are some of the ones in the contemporary period that have felt the need to express themselves on paper as well as in perfumes.......
Continue reading "New Book: Le Parfum by Jean-Claude Ellena, Master Perfumer {Fragrant Reading} {Fragrant Shopping}" »
We owe the Romans the very word of "perfume". To learn more about the classical roots of our perfume heritage we can now read a work by specialist of classical antiquity Susan Stewart who released a book entitled Cosmetics and Perfumes in The Roman World, Tempus, 2007 in February in the UK, and which will soon be available in the US, in principle sometime in September. It is now available for pre-order on Amazon for $23.10.
There is a very interesting interview of Alan Stuart, co-founder of Headonism, a line of organic scented hair care on newconsumer.com, "The UK's hottest ethical lifestyle magazine." The fragrances are so good a French perfumer could not believe his nose when he caught the aroma of Scent 2 and was told it was coming from a shampoo and not from a fragrance.....
Continue reading "Scent 1, 2 & 3 by Headonism - Organic Hair Care Shampoo {Fragrance News} {Hair} {Fragrant Reading}" »
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